A PROPHET OF MILLINERY.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXXX, Issue 10212, 5 December 1893, Page 6

A PROPHET OF MILLINERY.

(Daily JVcics.) There has arisen in Hew Xork a prophet and teacher whose chosen disciples are ladies, and whose subjects are dress and furniture. He wears velvet robes and a thumb-ring, and he is taken seriously, quite seriously. The velvet' robes are doffed when ha visits other drawing-rooms than his own, but he never wears black. It ia inartistic. Grey checks clothe the prophet, and he loosely drapes his coat across hia chest. It is made very full on purpose. It is a beautiful sight to sea him surrounded by eager disciples, to whom ha dispenses such gems of wisdom as this: “ I've a deal of respect for tbo woman who, when I say her hat is all wrong, goes home and puts her foot through it.” - This is very interesting. So are the days when, zealous to teach practical lessons of beauty to hia clients, he gets out what he calls his “ rag-bag ” and pulling cut of it lengths of orange silk, or purple velvet, disposes them by tbo aid of pins about his own cheat, in order to show how gowns ought to ‘'pivot” from the■ shoulders. His enormous white silk tie, puffed portentously beneath the chin, rather hampers him in these object lessons, but this tie ia an article of faith with him. •Ha is not unknown in London. People who have forgotten his name will remember his tie. He says original things at times. For instance,.he declares that if a woman wants all the cups and saucers she has broken and all the torn clothes she has fretted over to show in her face, she can put on a black gown. • Over here in England black dresses are often thought becoming to island complexions. The prophet of millinery commands his disciples to wear their diamonds with yellow gowna. Gold must never be seen in company with black, only yellow. Orange and yellow and tawny gold are, apparently, the head and front of his coiour-craed, just as draperies from the shoulder are his standpoint, in the matter of form. Another* of his beliefs is decidedly revolutionary. lie thinks that dresses should be pinned on, not permanently coerced by needle and cotton, blot only this, but they should be pinned differently each time they are pat on. “Art ia drees,” he asserts. " went out when needle and scissors came in.” “If I were a preacher,” he says, “I would not allow a woman in a corset inside the church door.” But he should reflect that preachers cannot act on surmise, and the corset has to be conjectured through a layer or two of clothing and proof, ia the circumstances; would be out of the question. Advice on dress without allusion to iailor-msde gowns would be incomplete. The teacher agrees that they have style, but he bids hm hearers to choose between style and personality.„Tha tailor-mades would not admit of his favourite method of pinning a breadth of something ou the right shoulder, and arranging the rest of it according to vha moment's mood. He counsels the biu.jeyed to wear dull blue, which will turow info relief the blueness of their eyes, but warns them against a brighter tone of azure, which would eclipse and consequently deaden the cerulean orbs. To the grey-haired he commends a grey gown wit h pink ribbons, which is good advice. But his opinions on Sevres chiua are unpardonable. It is hideous, he says. It is Yenus rising from the sea in a soup-plate. Who wants, he queries, to see lovers sighing at each other under jelly? or to catch bare glimpses of their affection through gravy film? vVhab can the prophet mean ? Has he ever seen any real Sevras.